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Thursday, August 4, 2011

This recipe is ALL OVER the internet and has been for quite some time. I've been wanting to try it, but things like a complicated pregnancy and then a newborn kept me from having the opportunity. The newborn isn't quite so new anymore, and he's getting pretty good at amusing himself for a few minutes, especially if I put him in the kitchen with me, so I decided that I should try this out for breakfast this morning.

All you have to have is a frozen banana or two and a food processor. I was amazed that a couple of frozen bananas whipped up into such a smooth, sweet, and creamy treat. I was pretty excited. Don't get TOO excited though, because while this does have the creamy consistency of soft serve, it doesn't exactly taste like soft serve. This is good for me actually, because I don't particularly like soft serve, but my love for bananas has been pretty well established by now.

Single Ingredient Soft Serve

Ingredients:

3 frozen bananas. You want them to be pretty ripe, but not so ripe that they're all brown.

Directions:

1. Place frozen bananas in bowl of food processor fitted with an S blade.

How long this takes will depend on your food processor and on your personal definition of proper consistency.

There you go. That's it. Easy peasy, healthy, low calorie, low fat ice cream. It is fantastic just the way it is, but you can add stuff, as well. Of course that makes it no longer one ingredient, but still with a base this healthy you can splurge just a tiny bit too. I added a teaspoon of vanilla extract and a very liberal shake of cinnamon to mine. It would be good with a couple of tablespoons of peanut butter or with some fresh mint or even mint extract. If you are the chocolaty type, you could add a bit of cocoa powder or chocolate chips. Then of course are the combinations...chocolate peanut butter, chocolate mint, etc. etc. I think this would be good with some dried fruit as well. You could go tropical and add a bit of shredded coconut and some pineapple, or you could go tart and add cherries and apricots. I'd soak the fruit for a few hours first though. The possibilities are endless, and the base is only about 80 calories per serving and chock full of potassium! Also, you can totally eat ice cream for breakfast! Doesn't get much better than that!

My Story

I like to eat, hate to cook, and have been called a hippie more times than I care to count. I wear that label with pride. I've been a vegetarian for a long time now, and I've got some serious vegan leanings. I'd say that I'm "sort of" vegan, but I'm pretty sure you can't be sort of vegan. You either are or aren't. As yet, I'm not.

You'll find a lot of different things here. I have vegan and vegetarian recipes, an occasional raw recipe, and the odd gluten free recipe every now and then. The whole raw idea intrigues me greatly, but I can only work on one thing at a time here! You'll find my ramblings as well, both pointless and otherwise, on such fascinating subjects as finding my fitness again and how I'm going to go about raising a vegetarian baby (or two!) in a house where both his brother and his father eat meat (how AM I going to do that, anyway?!).

This blog is about my journey to get healthy and to stay healthy while still enjoying food. It's about how I learned to nourish my body instead of just feeding it. It's about how I maintained a 75 pound weight loss for five years, and the health crisis that caused me to put almost 30 pounds of it back on. It's about finding my way once again. Mostly it's about how I learned to enjoy my life while embracing and indulging my inner hippie along the way.